“The romance and enchantment of a mercantile store begins when you enter and sniff the deep aroma of many spices, tobacco, and the stove with its burning fragrance so distinct it can dissolve the years off any aging country boy...”

— BRUCE D. HEALD

Our Story

History of the Mercantile

Once upon a simpler time, out on the frontier and in the remote American towns slowly
established through the blood, sweat, tears, and resilience of individuals with limited
means but boundless determination, the mercantile store was the center of the universe.

In those sole proprietor outposts, stocked often with more character than inventory, the
aroma of spices, tobacco, and coffee blended with sawdust. Shelves were lined with soaps,
rifle shells, and nails among other necessities. Under dangling lanterns and ropes, large
wooden barrels offered fresh pickles or mincemeat while, towards the back — beside the
pot-bellied stove and a corner that served as the local post office — you might find a
leather saddle or satchel handmade by a craftsman whose personal reputation could not
survive anything less than producing unfaltering excellence and durability in each item.

Mercantile Men, c.1954

For there in the general mercantile stores that sustained our nation’s earliest years, a
man’s word was his bond, credit was secured with a handshake, and a meticulously
hand-written ledger documented every transaction, tethering the community together.

The Mercantile Standard

Today, Mission Mercantile exists to carry those uncompromising personal standards of quality
and integrity into the future through the remarkable, 100% full-grain vegetable-tanned
leather goods that bear our name and the dedicated level of service we provide to the
customers who value the unique virtues and features of these fine offerings.

In that sense, you might say our story is simple. We felt there was something vital and
authentic lost from the present world of leather goods. So we decided to passionately
restore and stand behind it ourselves, establishing Mission Mercantile as a house of leather
for individuals motivated by more than the common superficial adornments of status.

“We believe in the simple attributes, aesthetics, and functionalities that have already stood the test of time.”

— MISSION MERCANTILE

Well beyond producing extraordinary and lasting products with venerable craftsmanship and
old-world manufacturing techniques, we seek to build genuine and lasting connections with
the Mission Men and Women our remarkable leather products are designed to serve. We strive
to inspire passion and curiosity along personal journeys. After all, the mercantile stores
sprang from the intrepid peddlers who travelled from town to town, gradually seeding a vast
network of trading posts.

Local Post Office

Once a roof was added and a capable entrepreneur decided to plant roots in a single location,
the mercantile general store had arrived. From there, in addition to providing essential
goods and tools, the establishment often served as a de facto bank, post office, and
community center. The very political fabric of rural America took shape within, and
sometimes on, the mercantile store’s walls, from elections to auctions to every sort of
public notice, including the notorious "wanted posters" seeking outlaws at large.

But above all else the mercantile stores existed to deliver genuine value for those who
depended on it most — and could not survive serving anything less. And in maintaining
that spirit today despite the current surfeit of disposable, often poorly constructed
mass-produced products in the world, Mission Mercantile will never make any item that
falls short of extraordinary.

Colorado Road Trip, c 1922

Our exhaustive attention to detail and quality control means that every single stitch and
hammer is carefully considered, utilizing only authentic materials, chosen with longevity in
mind. This means any needed repairs can be made well into the future by experienced
craftsmen.

As such, all Mission Mercantile products are made for many lifetimes, designed to improve
with age, accumulating distinction and character as future heirlooms worthy of being passed
down for generations.

And like the shopkeeper behind the mercantile store counter, we stand proudly behind every
single one of the remarkable leather good offerings that we sell, guaranteeing them
unconditionally while holding a place for you in our ledger.

His Idea was the Ultimate Ice-Breaker

For the vast majority of human history, there was only one supplier of ice — and reliable
customer service has never been Mother Nature’s calling card. Today, we take the
convenience of Father Maytag (and countless others) for granted, but before electricity
ushered in modern refrigeration, there was a global ice age that lasted roughly a
hundred years, launched by one ambitious entrepreneur who’d lost a fortune in coffee and
needed a comeback.

New England’s Frederic Tudor thus made himself Mother Nature’s distributor, kicking off
the “ice trade” in 1806 with his first shipment from local frozen lakes to wealthy
European plantation owners on the Caribbean island of Martinique. His labor-intensive
enterprise soon blossomed into a multimillion-dollar industry, expanding first across
the eastern U.S. then throughout the world.

Tudor's most profitable natural ice route extended all the way to India, but numerous
competitors and innovations spread the trade even further. Consequently, there was a
revolution in how food could be preserved, transported, and consumed. For all the ice
cream and cold beer alone in that pivotal period, Tudor is a hero, the father of the ice
box as well as the rugged ice bags that lugged his melting treasure into homes day after
day, when a household could easily melt through thousands of pounds a year.

In towns and cities where the strapping ice man rolled up with his wagon or cart,
families often met him at the door with coupons torn from a pre-paid book of bulk
purchases. In other cases, as Arthur Miller vividly recalled from childhood, "once they
had slid the ice into the box, they invariably slipped the sacking off and stood there
waiting, dripping, for their money."

A Cut Above

The innovative “cut nail” arrived in the mid-1700's, liberating the world from the
ancient craft of making nails by hand, a method that kept those sharp essentials an
expensive resource in short supply. Before nails could be cut en masse from sheets of
iron, they were so precious in the American colonies, for example, it is said that
abandoned houses were sometimes deliberately burned down to retrieve them.

Ever eager for progress, Thomas Jefferson built a successful factory at Monticello that
produced cut nails as well as finer hand-forged nails. Although commonly referred to as
"square nails", in actuality only the handmade variety tended to be truly square; the
mass-produced ones are more rectangular. And these days, genuine square-cut nails are a
premium resource for authentic restoration work.